January 29, 1983 – Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas / The Bus Boys (S8 E11)

Segments are rated on a scale of 1-5 stars

COLD OPENING
Bob Hope (Dave) & Frank Sinatra (JOP) pressure Woody Allen (Rick)

   

— Nice to see tonight’s two hosts front-and-center doing fun impressions right at the start of the show.
— Some funny lines from Rick-as-Woody-Allen’s asides to the camera.
— The Mia Farrow line was great.
— Whoa at Joe-as-Sinatra’s sudden “f**gots” line.
— Good bit with Joe’s Sinatra affecting the outcome of the Super Bowl with one phone call.
STARS: ***½

MONOLOGUE
Bob & Doug McKenzie are mad at DOP for giving their hotel address
the McKenzies visit NYC landmarks

     

— Rick and Dave make their monologue entrance in character as the McKenzie Brothers. Oh, this is gonna be fun.
— I like their summing up the history of SNL’s quality as “It was good, then it went downhill, then it got good again, then it– etc.”. Fellow SCTV alum Martin Short would later say something similar about the timeline of SNL’s quality in his 1996 monologue.
— The bit with them getting revenge on Don Pardo is funny.
— A cutaway to a pre-taped segment with the McKenzie Brothers out in the city. I’m loving this.
— Funny part with them suddenly leaving the clothing store as soon as an employee asks them if they need help.
— This kinda ended abruptly. I had hoped this would go on a lot longer.
STARS: ***½

WHINERS
Doug & Wendy Whiner are taken hostage during a bank robbery

   

— Oh, god, here we go…
— For once, I got an actual laugh from one of the Whiners themselves (usually my only amusement in their sketches comes from the straight man characters playing off of them), with Joe wimpishly telling Brad “I’ll make mincemeat out of you”.
— Unusual ending: after Gary and Brad go nuts and start firing their guns all over the place, the camera does a freeze-frame with the words “To Be Continued Next Week” being displayed onscreen. I’m aware that they DO follow through on this by continuing the sketch in next week’s episode, where we see (I think) Doug Whiner in the hospital recovering from his gunshot wounds (I guess Gary and Brad’s bullets somehow missed Wendy Whiner). While I normally would admire the fact that this is a rare instance of SNL doing a two-part sketch over the course of two episodes, I’m certainly not looking forward to having to put up with the Whiners for the second episode in a row.
STARS: *½

I’LL BE THE JUDGE OF THAT
Tyrone Green on Dick Cavett’s (Rick) game show

     

— After becoming familiar with the blandness of Dick Cavett when I reviewed the original SNL era (Cavett hosted twice in 1976), I’m getting a big kick out of seeing Rick do an impression of him.
— Rick is really good here and is perfectly capturing Cavett’s aura, though the voice isn’t quite as dead-on as I hoped it would be.
— Rick begins his introduction to his next guest with “one of the angriest poets…”, which must mean it’s gonna be… Tyrone Green!
— Yep, I was right.
— Tyrone’s back to having his usual short hair after suddenly sporting long dreads last time we saw him (the famous “Kill All the White People” sketch) . Heh, I guess we’re to believe that in the universe of that last sketch, Tyrone’s dreads were just a wig.
— Robin is really cracking me up in her scenes as Oriana Falacci, and the random sponsors she’s announcing are funny.
— Some good laughs from Eddie’s angry threats to the orchestra.
STARS: ***½

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest & EDM perform “The Boys Are Back In Town”

 

— Very interesting to see Eddie participating with the Bus Boys. I may be forgetting something, but I believe he’s only the third individual cast member in SNL history who got to sing with a musical guest during a musical performance (the first two were Chevy Chase in a Carly Simon performance from season 1 and Bill Murray in a The Amazing Rhythm Aces performance from season 5). I’m not counting the times where a cast member sang with a musical guest while in character as someone, like several instances of John Belushi as Samurai or Joe Cocker.
— You can tell Eddie’s having a lot of fun here.

HITCHCOCK HYGIENE
a suspenseful reminder to see your dentist regularly

     

— This is doing a great job of recreating the aura of a typical 1940s/50s thriller.
— The dentist reveal at the end was a good twist.
— This overall film had almost a Tom Schiller feel to it, though I doubt it was him behind this one.
STARS: ***½

GUY TALK
Liberace (Dave) & Michael Jackson (EDM) recount macho exploits

  

— Fairly funny concept with Liberace and Michael Jackson being the guests on a manly talk show.
— Eddie’s exaggeratedly high-pitched voice is kinda making me laugh, but his general portrayal of Michael as possibly gay would probably be seen as weird nowadays. I guess in hindsight, Eddie’s impression here is serving as a snapshot of a time before Michael became known for a lot of the quirks and oddities that you would later always see in an MJ impression.
— Eddie and Joe seem to be cracking up together during some portions of this sketch.
STARS: **½

PORTA-DISH
Gerry Todd (Rick) recommends a portable satellite dish made of fine china

     

— The satellite dish being a simple dinner plate is KINDA amusing, but I hope that’s not the main joke here.
— Okay, this sketch is getting pretty funny, with the strange channels being displayed.
— I especially got a good laugh right now from the “Dyslexia Channel” which has badly-spelled closed captioning.
STARS: ***½

SATURDAY NIGHT NEWS
JOP predicts the outcome of Super Bowl XVII- Dolphins by 9
Dr. Ruth Westheimer (MAG) talks about how to deal with male impotence
EDM solicits viewer letters asking Ronald Reagan to support MLK holiday
Walter Cronkite (Dave) criticizes BRH’s anchoring style

       

— Immediately after the top story, Brad ALREADY throws to Joe doing an SNL Sports commentary. It’s weird how some of this season’s Saturday Night News quickly go to the first guest commentary after Brad has done only one or two jokes. That’s unheard of in other eras of SNL’s news segment.
— Joe’s fast-talking Spanish outburst was pretty funny, though he already did that in an earlier episode.
— Very quick SNL Sports commentary from Joe, with him basically just predicting the Dolphins will beat the Redskins by 9 points in tomorrow’s Super Bowl.
— The Barbie Hitler pre-taped segment was weak.
— The debut of Mary’s Dr. Ruth impression, which would go on to be a big recurring role for her.
— The ending of Mary’s commentary with Brad stopping her from doing the finger-in-hole sexual gesture was pretty funny, but the rest of the commentary wasn’t really noteworthy. I hope her future appearances are an improvement.
— First time we’ve seen Eddie doing a news commentary as himself in a good while.
— Eddie’s kinda stumbly with his delivery here, but he’s making lots of fantastic and hilarious points during his rant against President Reagan’s refusal to make Martin Luther King’s birthday a national holiday. I especially love Eddie’s line about how Reagan probably thinks Mother’s Day is a black holiday, and the whole part with Eddie asking viewers to mail him letters supporting the idea of an MLK holiday so Eddie can televise himself dropping the letters onto the White House front lawn with a truck.
— They seem to be going really light on the number of news jokes from Brad. Tonight’s SNN is spending far more time on the guest commentaries than Brad’s jokes. No big loss there. At this point, I’m not even sure if I can consider Brad Hall an improvement over Brian Doyle-Murray’s dreadful run as an SNL news anchor anymore. Brad had a somewhat promising start in his early SNNs this season where he seemed to be trying to leave his mark by doing lots of unique side segments (e.g. yelling at James Watt on the phone, singing the bad news of the week in an upbeat folk song, etc.), but it didn’t take long for his SNNs to devolve into stagnant blandness. Supposedly, Dick Ebersol is to blame for this drop in quality, as word has it that he forced Brad to drop his more politically-charged material and interesting side segments in favor of just doing simple “picture gags” all the time.
— Dave’s Walter Cronkite segment is pretty fun, and a good way to close tonight’s SNN.
STARS: **

HELL BENT FOR GLORY
WWII movie characters realize deadly cliches are due

     

— Julia’s role as a “blind beautiful French girl” seems like it will be a rare sample of the type of comedic greatness that we would later become familiar with from her throughout her big post-SNL career. I’ve been noticing that Julia’s been pretty tame during her SNL tenure so far, I’m guessing partly because of her very young age at the time (only 21 years old; she probably hadn’t fully developed as a comedian yet) and partly because the writers probably didn’t know how to use her talents properly.
— I was right, Julia’s getting some pretty good laughs here.
— I’m liking the meta-premise of the characters calling out all the war movie cliches that they fall under.
— Tim: “What happens to me, sarge??!?” Dave: “Nothing, you’re just an extra, get out of here.”
— The ending with Dave “hiding” was kinda weak.
— I like the ending credits sequence, showing the cast of characters one-by-one.
STARS: ***½

RENT ED MCMAHON
rent Ed McMahon (JOP) for your next party & your unfunny jokes will work

  

— I remember reading how Moranis and Thomas didn’t like the fact that Joe wears such a heavy amount of make-up for his Ed McMahon impression in this sketch. Joe DOES tend to go overboard with the make-up in quite a number of his celebrity impressions. I think both he and Harry Shearer are the only two cast members in SNL history who were such perfectionists when it came to going all out in trying to make themselves look EXACTLY like the celebrities they play. And then you have cast members like Phil Hartman and Darrell Hammond who were perfectly content with simply using a wig and a dead-on vocal imitation to pull off their great impressions. (Okay, Hammond did sometimes tend to rely on a few minor prosthetics, but not overly so)
— Decent premise of McMahon appearing at your party to laugh at your bad jokes in order to make them seem funnier to other party guests.
STARS: ***

FIVE MINUTES TO REFLECT
a rabbi (Rick) explains origin of Jewish traits

 

— This sketch is already really funny right out of the gate, especially Rick’s fake sideburns coming off with the glasses.
— Okay, after a while, the humor in this has unfortunately kinda died down, but still decently funny.
— I like Rick’s complaints when they tell him to wrap up the show.
STARS: ***

THE BIOLOGICAL WATCH
the Ronco Biological Watch tracks women’s fertility

   

— Here’s Gary taking a shot at playing the type of manic pitchman role that were usually Dan Aykroyd and Joe Piscopo’s forte.
— Pretty funny commercial so far, especially the various famous songs the watch plays for different situations.
— Gary is doing okay in the manic pitchman role, but definitely not up to the same level of Aykroyd or Piscopo.
STARS: ***

MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
musical guest performs “New Shoes”

DON’T HITCH-HIKE
— Rerun

GOODNIGHTS

 

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IMMEDIATE POST-SHOW THOUGHTS:
— A consistently pretty solid episode. While nothing stood out as particularly great and the overall show was not quite as strong as I was expecting a Rick Moranis/Dave Thomas-hosted episode to be (I should probably learn to start lowering my standards, considering this is the Ebersol era), this was still probably one of the better episodes in a while due to the consistent quality and Rick & Dave’s always-fun character work. Whiners and Saturday Night News were the only two things of the night that I flat-out disliked.

HOW THIS EPISODE STACKS UP AGAINST THE PRECEDING ONE (Lily Tomlin):
— a step up

My full set of screencaps for this episode is here

TOMORROW:
SNL’s recent string of impressive comedic hosts continues, as Sid Caesar helms our next episode. The show’s booking of hosts has really done an amazing turnaround from season 7, where we were getting “exciting” names like Robert Urich and Elizabeth Ashley.